‘Castle’ recap: Monsters, mean gorillas and murder in ‘The Fast and the Furriest’

That’s not to say that Bigfoot doesn’t exist or that “Castle” proved there were no monsters out there. No, all we learned from “The Fast and the Furriest” is that lots of people want to find humanoid forest-dwellers and that blaming Bigfoot for murder is nothing but a red herring.

Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) don’t kill people, after all. People kill people.

Monkey murder?

The murder victim of the week is a young woman named Anne Cardinal, a graduate student in evolutionary biology. Since she seems to have had her face clawed by something during the attack, suspicion immediately turns to the ape sanctuary where she worked.

But, as the professor points out, the gorillas are sweet and innocent and wouldn’t hurt anyone. Although there is a gorilla named Moonshine who seems to have some nasty designs on Castle …

Big feet

Next up, the car that dumped Anne’s body at a hospital gets traced to a lowlife criminal, a guy with a pitbull named Bada*s. But it turns out that neither man nor dog did the deed — the criminal found Anne bleeding in an alley. When the cops arrive to check it out, they find blood, boot-prints and some footprints.

Giant footprints. Was the victim killed by Bigfoot?

The plot thickens (and gets weirder at the same time)

Phone records lead Castle and Beckett to a cryptozoologist named Meeks. Meeks has a yeti finger. He also knows that Anne Cardinal was actually a leading researcher on Bigfoot and that lots of people had been stalking her in order to find the beast.

One such stalker had been seen arguing with Anne in a parking lot. He turns out to be a “Crocodile Dundee meets Indiana Jones meets Ted Nugent” named Chase Diggins. Diggins lives in a dark basement where things growl and it’s totally okay to shoot arrows at cops. Oh, and he has a hook for a hand, courtesy of a bloodthirsty yeti.

But Diggins has an alibi.

Into the woods

Camera glass found in Anne’s head wound leads the detectives to the victim’s video footage. It was taken in the woods, so Castle and Beckett head out to a two-square-mile area pinpointed by a random but prominent techie. Their search is quickly hampered when the pair falls into a giant pit-trap.

Bigfoot didn’t dig the trap, but someone in a Bigfoot costume sure did. When Beckett goes to get a rope, Castle is visited by a giant, furry creature. But it just turns out to be Dr. Meeks in a costume. He just really, really wants to see Bigfoot.

Instead, all Meeks finds is the murder weapon, a bloody club.

Bigfoot? What Bigfoot?

This would be the point when we find out how little Bigfoot has to do with any of this. It turns out that Anne’s roommate, Justine, had been murdered a year earlier. Kurt, Justine’s boyfriend and the suspected killer, disappeared shortly afterwards. Since a man matching Kurt’s description had been seen around Anne shortly before her death, it looks like Kurt’s the real culprit.

Nope.

Kurt is actually innocent of his girlfriend’s death, and Anne had been trying to help him prove that. Shortly before she died, Anne found a key piece of evidence — Justine’s favorite pendant — somewhere and swallowed it for safe-keeping.

But the original murderer got to her anyway.

Whodunnit?

We soon learn that the primate professor is the real culprit. He had been obsessed with Justine and then killed her so he wouldn’t lose his job for stalking. Then, when Anne got close, the professor killed her too and shifted the blame to Bigfoot.

It’s not the most logical of solutions but it pretty much works.

In other inexplicable news …

Throughout the episode, Castle is perplexed by the way in which his gourmet leftovers keep disappearing from the fridge. The many women in his life all deny being the culprit, and neither Borrowers nor super-rats seem likely. It’s not even a yeti.

So Castle sets up one of those anti-bank robbery dye packs to explode on the culprit. That’s when he catches Alexis red-handed. Or blue-faced, as the case may be.

It turns out that Alexis gave away her food money to a friend and didn’t want to tell her dad. Father and daughter share an educational moment and then head out to a fancy restaurant for more leftovers.

Good quotes and stuff

“I wouldn’t look this good if I was pigging out on leftovers.” — Martha

“Maybe there are tiny Borrowers living under the floorboards who come out at night.” — Alexis

“Maybe my apartment’s being invaded by some kind of super-rat.” — Castle